Mr. Chair, the operational budget has remained largely flat. A small increase is not in any way meeting the massive needs of infrastructure deficits across this country.
I would also remind the minister that the housing situation in Comox is increasing dramatically and people are having to move farther and farther away. I agree that my riding is the most beautiful riding across the country, but when people are having to move an hour or an hour and a half away from where they work, that is a huge commute, and that is what is happening in my region. It is very important that we do not get lost in some of these discussions of big numbers. Action on the ground is desperately needed.
I have also shared with the minister my concern about purchasing second-hand F-18s from Australia. The Parliamentary Budget Officer examined the cost of buying and upgrading 18 used Australian F-18s and flying them until 2032. His report that was released earlier this year puts the financial price tag at between $1.09 billion and $1.15 billion, considerably more than the estimate of just under $900 million from DND. In 2018, we also saw in the Auditor General's report, “In our opinion, purchasing interim aircraft does not bring National Defence closer to consistently meeting the new operational requirement introduced in 2016.”
The other part that is interesting to me in the research that I have done is that Denmark, a country that has a comparably sized air force to Canada's, created an open and transparent competition. A fighter jet has been chosen and delivery is expected in 2022, which seems like a fairly reasonable process to me.
I am curious about why the government has chosen to move forward with second-hand fighter jets rather than holding an open and transparent competition in a timely manner—and here we are almost at the end of the Liberals' period of governance—to meet the domestic and international requirements of the Royal Canadian Air Force, be operable with Canada's vast and unique geography, including the Arctic, and be interoperable with our allies, including our commitments to NORAD and NATO.